There are more than 500 green home and building retrofitters in the United States, but few that can outmuscle Sustainable Spaces, soon to be Recurve, in California’s San Francisco Bay Area.
So when CEO Pratap Mukherjee reports that his company has seen record levels of sales in August, September and October, it is a good sign for the market as a whole. The San Francisco company is seeing quarterly revenue growth of 70 percent, he boasted during an interview last week.
Sustainable Spaces, soon to be Recurve, has seen record sales.
Mukherjee says greater consumer awareness of home energy conservation is behind the industry’s emerging from the shadows. Buildings use about 40 percent of the nation’s power and ways to cut this consumption often aren’t complicated or high tech – better insulation, plugging air leaks, wrapping pipes.
Also giving the market its pop is an emerging confluence of public money and financing options, including a yet to be announced initiative to give more federal money to cities looking to retrofit buildings. In Berkeley, for instance, homeowners can tie the costs of green energy remodeling to future tax payments, drawing out the bill. The White House only last month added its stamp of approval to the market, releasing spending guidelines for $80 billion of stimulus funding.
Perhaps the new activity is verifying what studies have said all along. Green buildings have greater value. According to one report by the University of San Diego and CoStar Group, Energy Star rated buildings often sell for 15 percent more and that rental rates can be $2 a square foot higher.
More so, occupancy rates of retrofitted buildings are higher.
Perhaps an industry is finally coming of age – and the explanation comes down to dollars and cents.
Jean-Baptiste Su
Mark Boslet
chiahwu
November 10, 2009 at 11:51 am |
Since irrigation water use is such a large issue regarding the amount of water we use for irrigation why not start there in designing and using a better product? http://www.IrrigationThatMakesSense.org is a non profit group trying to battle our national water issues by providing funding and installation of green irrigation products. They have a irrigation product that conserves up to 80% of water use after two years. Their product is installed sub-surface therefore you never see it watering. It makes the plants stronger, uses less fertilizer along with water and no over spray onto sidewalks and roads. The cost to install their underground irrigation product is comparable to overhead sprinklers but this is the green irrigation choice.